


The Pages In-Between

by Saraphim



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angel is the Centerfold, Castiel is a Sex God, Charlie Ships It, Crossdressing Kink, Dead John Winchester, Destiel - Freeform, Dirty Talk, Eventual Smut, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Flustered Dean, Friends to Lovers, High School, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Librarian Castiel, M/M, Mechanic Dean, Model Castiel, Nerd Castiel, Nipple Piercings, Openly Bisexual Dean, Panty Kink, Photography Kink, Slow Burn, Tattooed Castiel, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Unbeta'd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:10:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5336957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraphim/pseuds/Saraphim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's life is pretty great. Sammy's at a fancy college with an amazing girlfriend who's way out of his league. Bobby's auto shop is thriving. He lives in an actual, totally stationary house that's always packed with the people he cares most about. So there's no reason for him to ever reflect on his less-than-stellar past.</p><p>But a pair of familiar blue eyes staring intently out of a skin mag abruptly drags forth forgotten memories of a rare, happy time in his youth.</p><p>And Dean is suddenly inspired to reach out to an old friend. </p><p>...Even if that makes him a little bit of a creeper.</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Fic inspired by the J. Geils Band song "Centerfold."</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pages In-Between

The _Busty Asian Beauties_ rack is empty. Dean laments his choice in convenience store and stifles a pout. If his moose of a little brother Sammy were here, he’d probably be torn between hysterical laughter or an epic bitchface at the way Dean’s now moping in the tiny, porn magazine aisle of the corner gas station. He heaves a melodramatic sigh and half-heartedly scans for something different to flip through.

It’s not like Dean’s a porn addict or anything. He doesn’t even look at the magazines in a sexual way much anymore. It’s almost become a hobby, like stamp collecting. Growing up, every horrible backwater Gas-N-Sip that John stopped at on their whiskey-fueled, perpetual road trip had a rack of skin mags hiding somewhere in the corner. What started out as an immature joke Dean played on Sammy (dropping _Busty Asian Beauties_ into Sam’s basket when he was trying to flirt with a cute blonde girl and Sam being so distracted by the girl’s giggling at his expense that he actually purchased it) soon became something of a legitimate fetish for Dean. Well, fetish is a strong word. There’s just something about Asian ladies with big…

Dean shakes his head. Thinking about it will just make him more depressed. He doesn’t really care for any of the other publications. Dean’s sifted through the racks before trying to see if anything else catches his fancy, but every other magazine is clichéd or too trashy for his tastes. What he sees displayed here now looks no different. He’s about to call the whole trip a wash so he can just save his money for when the next issue of _BABs_ comes out, but something dark catches his eye.

It’s not something he usually sees on the porn magazine rack. At first he thinks it’s a mis-stocked _Men’s Health_ or something, but the title is printed horizontally down the left side which doesn’t match anything he remembers seeing on any muscle junkie magazines. The high-contrast, black-and-white photo that makes up the cover is what caught his eye standing out clearly among the hyper-colorized and oversized texts of the other salacious magazines. When he plucks it off the rack and brings it closer to him he wonders if maybe is isn’t an art journal. 

_Adonis_

The title is printed in a classy, simplistic font like you’d see all over some high end boutique. Dean’s intrigued. From a distance he thought the photo was of a sculpture or some type of architecture, but now that he has it in his hands there’s no mistaking the image for what it is. 

Hipbones. 

_Male_ hipbones.

The photo is cropped at the top right below where the guy’s nipple would be, and the bottom is cropped so tantalizingly close that Dean’s for sure that this guy has to participate in some serious manscaping. Dean concedes that the photographer is a genius because the longer he stares (and he can’t seem to stop staring) the more his mouth begins to water. The lighting acts like a caress across the model’s body casting all his best parts in sharp relief. His skin looks so soft but the muscle underneath seems like it could be carved from smooth stone, and there’s a small vein just to the right of the guy’s happy trail that Dean would pay money to trace with his tongue.

 _Well… You certainly got my attention._ Dean chuckles to himself as he delicately flips open the cover and lets the pages fan out to somewhere towards the middle. He’s very intrigued. Since there’s no other text on the cover he’s still not sure this isn’t some artsy fartsy publication for snobs pretending not to be perverts, but as the pages fall open on some very naked men Dean suppresses a whoop of victory.

“Oh hell yeah,” he whispers to himself. 

Dean’s not ashamed to thumb through a male, nudey mag in the middle of a busy gas station at 2pm on a Friday. That wasn’t always the case what with John Winchester’s A+ parenting, outdated ideas on machismo, and societal masculinity standards that Dean had to adhere to just to survive his formative years unscathed so he could take care of Sammy. Although, thinking back Dean didn’t even know he was interested in guys also until well after he graduated high school, but he likes to think he wouldn’t have been ashamed of it then either. Just maybe not as obvious about it. However moving here from conservative Kansas to colorfully liberal California means Dean’s seen some shit. Especially living so close to San Francisco. So he’s out and proud so to speak, unashamedly enjoying the well-photographed, totally nude male forms scattered through the magazine.

A lot of the photos are like the cover. Dean reckons the theme of this issue is appreciation of the male body as he scans over expertly photographed black-and-whites of the more innocent (but no less sensual) parts of different models which are evenly spaced throughout the issue like chapter dividers. There are also a healthy number of full body shots of certain models in various stages of undress that you’d expect to find in a porn magazine, but Dean finds it interesting how some of the more modestly covered models are actually causing his cheeks to heat up faster than looking at the completely exposed ones. There’s something to be said about the power of good photography. Dean thinks he might be developing a new fetish. He hastily turns back to the cover and begins working through the magazine one page at a time completely oblivious to the clerk eyeballing him from behind the counter.

 _Adonis_ has everything Dean could ever want and some things he didn’t even realize he needed. He’s devouring each page as quickly as his eyes can process. _**The strong angles of a square jawline lightly dusted with stubble. A shirtless cowboy standing at the shoulder of a horse stretching across to brush its flank as his jeans hang low from his hips, the muscles across his back covered in an attractive layer of sweat. A surfer emerging from the water with a wide smile, his trunks riding low and clinging tightly leaving nothing to the imagination. A tattooed guy sprawled across a couch with his thumbs hooked in his briefs and his back arched mid-motion of beginning to slide them off. A cropped image of the bottom of a face, the lips slightly parted as the model’s long, elegant fingers slide down them catching on the bottom one.**_

Dean doesn’t even stop to think how he must look as he frantically turns through page after page of these beautiful bodies. He doesn’t pause for long to inspect the images closely too anxious to see what awaits him on the next page. Until…

_Blue._

So far Dean was absently enjoying the juxtaposition made between the black-and-white photos of the individual body part shots and the full color of the full body ones, but now all he can see is blue. Dean’s fully aware his mouth is hanging open, but he can’t help it. He hasn’t even opened the centerfold page all the way yet, but he’s almost too afraid to look. Right now all that’s visible is an arm lying casually across the top of a head nestled in a messy patch of dark hair which is peeking out from underneath the bottom of the tri-folded page which showcases half of the guy’s body from the belly button down. Dean can’t tear his eyes away.

Blue _panties._

Blue, lacey boy-shorts barely concealing a huge bulge nestled at the base of the most sinful hipbone v and hugging the tops of a pair of thighs so toned they could probably snap a person in half. Dean is already half hard just from this half of the picture. He really doesn’t want to traumatize anyone today by popping a full boner in public like a deviant, but he must be a glutton for punishment because he just has to see where that toned torso cut off by the fold leads. There’s a slight tremor in his hand as he delicately pinches the edge of the bottom page between his fingers and eases it open like it’s made of thin glass instead of glossy paper.

_Oh…_

Pure shock is the only thing that saves Dean from an embarrassing erection. The man in the picture is… Dean can’t think of a word to describe him. The man is staring directly at the viewer in a way that’s intense, but not uncomfortably so. There’s the barest upturn at the corner of his mouth, a cocky smirk that makes Dean’s knees feel wobbly. And the guy has every right to smirk. The full centerfold image now uncovered reveals that the man is wearing a blue, silk, spaghetti-strap negligee which he teasingly lifts with the tips of his long fingers up over his chest exposing the nipple there. His upper body is as toned and gorgeous as the lower half suggested. Really compared to the other models Dean’s seen in the magazine, this guy’s not even the fittest. But Dean can’t stop staring back into those eyes. The challenge he reads in the mischievous, twinkling blue orbs is making his insides go fuzzy. Dean licks his lips and hungrily absorbs more details about the man. There’s hair that is artfully mussed to look like the man just woke up or had a lover running their fingers through it. He has high, sharp cheekbones that manage to make the man look simultaneously delicate and fierce. A shadow of stubble runs over the soft angles of his jaw leading to…

_Those look soft._

This is maddening! The guy is like the physical embodiment of contradiction. Everything about him is unremarkable and incredible, soft and sharp, fragile and strong all at the same time. Even his lips which seem like they might be rough because they are slightly chapped are such a soft pink and bow in such a gentle curve that Dean imagines kissing him might be like kissing a cloud… that has lighting in it.

Dean really needs to stop staring and knock himself out of this mega-aroused stupor, but something keeps niggling at the back of his mind. He has a feeling like he knows this guy, but that can’t be right because Dean would _definitely_ remember if he met this guy. He would have attempted every trick in his inventory to spend even just one night with this guy. That he could have somehow met and forgot him is unfathomable. Dean’s about to shake himself back to reality and continue his browsing the magazine, but his eyes dart one last time to the man’s nipple. It’s not like Dean’s a big dude-nipple fan, but there’s this tiny beauty mark or mole just above this guy’s that strikes Dean as being kind of adorable. It’s the only blemish on the guy’s whole body. Dean unconsciously rubs at the right side of his nose where it has the heaviest accumulation of freckles and sniffs. Something is wrong here. He… _knows_ that mole.

His blood runs cold. It hits Dean so suddenly he nearly staggers under the realization.

_No. No. Nonononononononono. **No.** There’s no way. No. That can’t be… He can’t…_

“Cas?” Dean breathes out quietly.

Now that he’s voiced it, recognition becomes undeniable. The runner’s body. The perpetual bed head. The chapped lips. The stare. Even that goddamned mole that Dean would sometimes catch glimpses of in the high school locker room and at pool parties in the summer. Dean looks up to regain his bearings, squeezing his eyes shut to refresh them. They tear up a bit since he apparently hasn’t blinked in a while. Slowly he eases them back open. He almost laughs; his face splitting into a huge grin despite himself. It’s still so obvious. Even the look on Castiel’s face seems to have morphed into one that says, “Duh, Dean. Obviously it’s me.”

Dean’s brain is sputtering trying to reconcile this image before him with the Castiel he remembers.

Castiel Novak was scrawny. Apparently he had been a chubby adolescent and got picked on a lot so he took up running just as a way to escape his troubles, but it had the fortunate side effect of toning his muscles and making him able to outrun the bullies. At 17, Castiel’s metabolism meant that he didn’t have much bulk and he was long overdue for a growth spurt. He was a little sheltered and not the best at social interaction, but when he first saw the eldest Winchester brother freshly enrolled at his school and sitting alone at lunch, he made it a point to talk to him. Dean immediately liked Cas because he was a nerd like Sam which meant those two became fast friends despite the 5 year age difference. Dean was always more concerned about whether or not Sam felt included and had plenty of friends, and with Castiel he instinctively became like an older brother despite him being a year younger. Dean would hear some of the kids still teasing Castiel behind his back, but Cas wasn’t fazed and never let on that he even heard any of it. Because of this pacifist nature and the biblical origin of his name, Dean took to calling Castiel “Angel” on rare occasions so he could see Cas’s unintentionally-hilarious, squinty, prepare-to-be-smote face.

Though Dean thought Castiel and Sam had more in common, Cas was never far from Dean. They’d pass notes under their desks during the few classes they shared. Dean’s notes were usually on the topic of his brother, food, hot chicks or containing crude, offensive drawings in an attempt to illicit a response from Cas’s impeccable poker face. While Castiel would wax poetically on strange things like the surreptitious deviousness of cats and the migratory patterns of certain bees. Cas was weird, but he was always genuine. And with Dean by his side Castiel’s secretly bold personality flourished. Dean encouraged Castiel’s unique nature and didn’t even flinch when Cas answered the door of his house one night wearing a poofy Lolita style dress and high heels. Dean just raised an eyebrow and Cas shrugged with a simple, “Wanted to see if I liked it,” and ushered him inside so they could play SNES. Though Castiel did in fact “like it,” he conceded a dress was impractical school wear; instead choosing to wear suit pants, cardigans, and his ever present trench coat which he once confessed to Dean made him feel like a caped superhero or an elegant courtly lady depending on his mood. Occasionally, Cas would feel compelled to wear fuzzy sweaters despite the weather. Those were Dean’s favorite days since the affluent Novaks could afford to provide their son with the softest sweaters that Dean just couldn’t keep his hands off of.

Looking back, Castiel might have been Dean’s first male crush. He didn’t understand what it meant at the time when he’d get a sudden tight feeling in his chest every time he passed by Cas in the hall. Sometimes Cas would glance up at Dean with a playful glint in his eye, and Dean would feel a slight tremor pulse all the way through him down to his shoes. It was painfully obvious to everyone at the time, according to Sam, but Dean hadn’t even entertained the thought that he might be attracted to Cas. He just thought maybe he was getting too anxious about when John would finally decide to pick them up and move them on to the next town. Dean figured John wanted to let him finish his senior year, but after that there were no certainties. And Dean didn’t like it. It was the longest they’d ever stayed in one place, and Sammy was finally starting to form more lasting relationships. Dean was too if he was being honest. So he thought that all the butterflies he felt around Castiel and the overwhelming urge to hold him close were more about abandonment then attraction.

A horn honks outside and Dean realizes he’s been standing there staring into space lost in the past with a porno mag hanging in the loose grip of his hands. He’s greeted with a sudden wave of clarity. Dean knows two things for certain.

One. He is buying this magazine. Hell, he’s prepared to buy all the copies this store has. He’s feeling overwhelmed by a sudden familiar surge of protectiveness for his old friend’s privacy.

And two. He’s going to find Castiel.

At one time, he would have called Cas his best friend (after Sammy of course). After graduation, John predictably had them packed up to move so fast that Dean barely had time to say one last goodbye. He always felt guilty for it. He never really explained to Cas about John’s drinking and their nomadic lifestyle. Castiel was sweet and pure. He didn’t need to know about the Winchester family’s dark side. But Dean never regretted anything more than keeping that part of himself from Cas when he saw the way his friend’s usually vibrant and alert eyes fell dim at the news that they may never see each other again.

God, if only Dean knew what he was feeling back then. He would have kissed that devastated frown right off of Cas’s face. As it was, they held each other in a tight hug for a long time. Both their eyes were misty as Dean stepped back with a coy smirk for one last, “See ya around, Angel.”

Instead of his smiting-angel face, all Castiel could manage was a pathetic sniffle and a thick “Goodbye, Dean.”

That was the last Dean saw Cas. It was before the advent of portable cell phones so they had no way of getting in touch. Dean tried to write, but there was nowhere for Castiel to send response letters since the Winchesters had no permanent address. He always just assumed Cas went off to college, majored in beekeeping or something, and forgot all about him. In Dean’s mind, Castiel was still the somewhat scrawny, short, round-faced nerd who maybe finally managed to grow a little facial hair.

But this Castiel… is making Dean’s brain short circuit. He grabs all the copies of _Adonis_ he sees sitting on the rack and slaps them down on the counter with authority. The clerk seems to be working up a judgmental eyebrow raise and smirk, but it dies on his face when he looks up at whatever he sees in Dean’s expression which he assumes must be his protective, big brother face. Lord knows he’s put the fear of God into a few dozen punks with that look over the years.

Dean had to do a lot of morally questionable things in his youth to keep Sammy safe, fed, and educated. So he knows the lengths someone may go to when they’re desperate. The confident smirk on Castiel’s face _should_ be enough to convince Dean that it was his choice to pose in… _Sweet apple pie_ … lingerie in a magazine for public eyes, but the irrationally overprotective side of him just has to make sure he’s okay.

 _Plus maybe you guys can reconnect and Castiel will let you help him out of those panties._ Dean’s brain helpfully supplies.

Dean is giddy as he hops into his ’67 Chevy Impala and tosses his bag of spoils onto the passenger side. His Baby’s engine growls to life and settles into a contented purr as her driver sorts through his thoughts. Dean’s already mapping it out in his mind. He’ll have to recruit one of his two genius hacker friends/roomates, Charlie and Ash, to his cause. Ash would probably give him less shit and ask fewer questions, but Dean has no doubt Charlie will be able to find Cas faster. He clenches his jaw and glances over at the overfull plastic bag spilling classy smut over his Baby’s bench seats.

Blue eyes challenging. That smirk . Both seem to say “Come and get me, Dean.”

Dean is definitely losing mind.

_Probably best not to drag this out. Charlie it is then._

He decides to call her later. Right now, he’s got to meet up with Sam for an early dinner.Dean nudges Baby into gear, and even she seems to be vibrating extra with excitement… Or she just needs new spark plugs.

Dean curses mildly under his breath, but his cheeks are aching from smiling too wide for too long and he whistles all the way to dinner.

**Author's Note:**

> Everytime I hear "Centerfold" on the radio, this story attacks my brain with a vengence demanding to be written. This is my first fic and unbeta'd so all mistakes are my own.  
> I don't have a lot of time to write and this fic has a mind of its own so I decided to break it up into chapters. The tags and rating are subject to change as the story progresses.
> 
> If anyone wants to help beta and/or offer constructive criticism, I'd appreciate it. I've got a lot more Destiel fics bouncing around in my mind, and I really want to do them justice.
> 
> Also, if you haven't already, give J. Geils Band a listen. I thought they just had the one-hit wonder, but they also wrote "Freeze Frame" and "Love Stinks".  
>  _The More You Know._  
>  I recommend "Whammer Jammer", "Angel in Blue", and "Ain't Nothing But a House Party".


End file.
